For CalyxPazAzul
Demand better than back to normal
Prologue
The man had disappeared from an isolated platform; the furthest platform eastward, in fact, on the 4°63' line, never a very popular ring. It took Mossa five hours on the railcar to get there, alone because none of her Investigator colleagues were available, or eager, to take such a long trip for what would almost certainly be confirmation of a suicide.
The platform appeared out of the swirling red fog, and moments later the railcar settled to a halt at what could barely be called a station. Mossa, who had not been looking forward to the long trip herself, had nonetheless passed it in a benevolent daze, looking out at the gaseous horizon that seemed abstractly static as it moved in constant strange patterns. Once disembarked, she found the rhythm of talking to people on the platform only with difficulty.
“And you say he was standing here?” Mossa asked.
“That’s right,” the settler confirmed. “Staring out into the eastern fog. People do that sometimes, no harm in it.”
Mossa grunted, not quite in agreement. She was aware that just because she didn’t understand the appeal—you couldn’t see a meter out into the muck anyway, what did it matter how far the ring had to curve before the next platform?—didn’t mean that others wouldn’t. But if you were emotionally inclined to find significance in that sort of thing, doing so on this platform seemed fairly likely to deepen any gloom you were feeling. The beaten metal was largely bare, the single ring crossing along it lonely, and it might have been a psychological effect of the sparse construction and distance from anywhere else on the planet, but the gasses seemed to flow high here, wraithing around them as if the platform had sunk lower than the standard height.
Maybe it had. The maintenance team didn’t make it out here very often, judging from the streaks of oxidation on the ledge.
“And then?” Did heleap? Fall? The parapet edging the platform was the regulation height, enough to rule out any but the most outré of accidents.
“He turned and went into the pub.” The settler gestured towards the stretch of platform beyond the minimal overhang that stood in for a station, where five buildings huddled into the atmosphere: four residences, with probably two or three separate homes apiece, and a pub with a home above it. The general store would come on a railcar, Mossa figured: a good long stop at the end of the line to allow the residents to select their purchases before sliding back in the other direction.
“Oh?”
“Had a lovely big breakfast. Last meal, I suppose,” the settler added, with mournful satisfaction.
“And then?”
The person shrugged, most of the motion muffled by their atmoscarfs, enveloping enough to be more properly called wraps. “Didn’t see him after that.”
“When did you realize he was missing?”
“It was Ganal, at the pub, noticed first. Like a good pubkeep should. Then when she mentioned, ‘Where’s that stranger? Came in on the morning rail?’ we all started looking.” The settler shrugged. “Nowhere much to hide here, no railcars had been in or out, so. One way or the other, he went over.”
Mossa and the settler stared down from the platform in silence, observing the constant writhe of the gaseous mixture barely below them, barely visible in the dim glow from the gaslights of the platform. At last Mossa turned away. “I’ll need to speak to the pubkeep.”
“Turned in now, shouldn’t wonder.”
Nobody wanted this to be easy. Mossa didn’t want to spend any longer on this piece of grit than necessary—she certainly wasn’t going to sleephere—but she had to at least try to find out what had happened to this mysterious stranger. “We’ll have to rouse her.”
The settler shrugged without surprise. “You might as well have a meal there, then. Soften her up, and give you something to do while you wait for her to be able to make sense. She only went to sleep a few hours ago, see.”
The pub was cozier than she expected: stacked rows of low pipe fires burning blue along one wall and rather nice rugs piled on the floor and hanging from the walls. A rabbit lollopped under some chairs in the corner, and a partridge muttered to itself on a perch high up behind the bar.
Mossa had not wanted the food, from a reluctance to commit herself to staying any longer than absolutely necessary as well as a deep suspicion about the quality of the meal. She was surprised to enjoy it.
“Heirloom Haricots,” the pubkeep said, nodding as she poured herself another swill of caffeination from her thermos. “It’s not just in the name.”
Mossa looked up at her, still chewing. “How did you know?”
The pubkeep lifted one round shoulder. “You had that look on your face, like you couldn’t believe what you were eating.”
“They are tasty.”
The pubkeep nodded at a planter. “Sequenced by my ancestor as a school project. We found it buried in one of the data caches they brought on the evacuation, along with gigs of other useless stuff. You won’t find the same flavor profile anywhere else on Giant.”
“The rest of it’s good too,” Mossa said, rendered generous by the unexpected bounty.
“Had to live up to the beans.” The pubkeep yawned and nodded. “Now you know, maybe you’ll come out here for a meal once in a while.”
Mossa nodded, although she doubted she’d ever want that taste badly enough for a five-hour rail ride each way. Especially if she didn’t have access to an Investigator railcar and had to go public. “Tell me about the stranger,” she said, putting her utensils down reluctantly.
The pubkeep yawned again, her first words squeaking around it. “Not much to tell. He came in, ordered breakfast—the cheese slurry over green beans. I asked where he was in from, and he said Valdegeld, but kind of proud-like, you know how some of them do, and he started dropping bits about how important he was there with his work and all and he clearly wanted to be asked more ’bout it, so
I didn’t.” The pubkeep’s lined face spread in a grin, then dropped the smile just as quickly. “You don’t think that’s why he—”
Mossa considered the question. “People who are very pleased with themselves are rarely driven to suicide by lack of interest from a single stranger.” People who were very pleased with themselves generally did not jump off of isolated platforms without an audience, either. Of course the pubkeep’s character assessment might not be valid, but …
Valdegeld. That at least gave her a place to start. Mossa noted that her desire to return there, the specific pulls of tactile and taste memory, were balanced almost evenly by a strong emotional reluctance.
“Heh, you’re right at that.” The pubkeep ran a cloth over the counter for the third time, then turned to fiddle with the atmosfilter controls, though Mossa detected no anomaly in the admixture she was breathing. “I guess I did ignore him a bit. Every time I did say a word to him his answer was about how wonderful Valdegeld is, great center of learning and culture bladdabladdabladda, which isn’t so much of interest, or mostly how wonderful he is, which is less so. So I let him be.”
“Reasonable enough,” Mossa said.
“Right. I washed up, made breakfast for myself and Loba, who usually comes in before starting his day. When I looked around again he was gone. I assumed he’d gone to do whatever he came here for.” Despite the pubkeep’s hopes, it seemed people did not come all this way just for the green beans.
“And how did you notice he was missing?”
Yawn. “Well, I asked around a bit. Not everyone comes in here during the day, but usually at least someone from every building on the platform, you know? And I kept asking who the stranger was visiting and what he was here for and no one knew. Every once in a while we get poets or young people who want to come out here just because it’s far away from everything, although not that many because everyone knows the platforms on 0°98' go much farther east. So when I stepped outside of the pub I took a look around the platform, in case he was, you know, staring into the void or
whatever they like to do. But I didn’t see him. I checked whether there had been a private railcar in, but nothing since the scheduled rail in the morning. And we would see it: everything fronts on the line, you can’t have something come in without people seeing. Then I asked with a bit more purpose, but nobody knew him. We couldn’t find him. And then we sent the telegram to the Investigators.” A pause. “Took you long enough to get out here.”
Mossa understood peripheric resentment of the center, but felt no need to explain why this had been a low priority regardless. She considered redoing the interviews with the platform residents, but it was a soggy idea all around. If the locals had lied to their pubkeep, they certainly weren’t going to tell her the answer. Unless the pubkeep was lying, but why would she do that and not get them to confirm her story?
“Sad,” the pubkeep said. She had finished her cup and was pouring from the thermos again. “Although why someone would come all the way out here instead of stepping off their own platform I never understand, bothering others for nothing like that. But”— swerving back to guilt again—“I suppose there was nothing we could have done.”
“No, of course not,” Mossa said. “Nothing at all you could have done.” She didn’t know that, but there was no harm in saying it. And she didn’t know what had happened to the stranger either, but she found her inclination was that he hadn’t dropped off the edge of the settlement into the featureless and crushing gasses of the planet. Or at least, if he had, it hadn’t been by choice.
Because Mossa had used a private railcar pertaining to the Investigator’s collective for this trip, she was able to depart as soon as she wished. The vehicle was comfortable enough, on the basis that its users might sometimes be required to travel for long periods without particularly wanting to. It was well-heated, and there was tea available, and Mossa sat wrapped in the cushions and covers and brooded. She had turned one of the wall panels into a storyboard for the investigation, plotting the little she knew and what she wanted to find out. It didn’t require a review of the paltry first and the much
more extensive second to figure out where she needed to go next, however. And when she considered who might be helpful there, she found the optimal, alluring, inconvenient name immediately. Valdegeld. And Pleiti.
Chapter 1
A strong tempest swirled in as my railcar approached Valdegeld University Platform. I was coming back after a short holiday and eager to get back to my rooms and my studies, so I watched the approach of the storm with annoyance. I could see it long before it caught us in its tendrils, the pressure changes tinting the fog orange, then pink, then fierce red, deepening as it closed with our ring, the famous 1°02' that stopped at Valdegeld’s main station as well as at Trubrant and Giant’s capital, Yaste. It had taken me three changes to get back from my parents’ farming platform on a much less traveled ring, and I was weary. Our carriage slowed as the first ráfagas of wind shuddered it on its single rail. Then someone must have calculated we were better off risking a rush to the station rather than waiting it out sans abris, and we accelerated, speeding even past the point where the signals suggested a lenten approach to the station. I braced myself for a hard brake, but Valdegeld platform is exceedingly long, and the railcar found a stopping point with only a bit of sharpness.
The carriage continued rocking even after we stopped, the storm bullying into the platform station and shoving railcars, fog, and, from what I could see through the windows, pedestrians. I stared for a moment, enjoying the dramatic view: the fast-moving fog of the massive perturbation fit the romantic, gloomily august image of Valdegeld, an image that still entranced me long after I had officially become a resident. I gathered my atmoscarf, slung my satchel, made for the door.
There was a small cluster of faces on the andén—like petals on a branch, my Classical training interjected, even if I could not visualize petalswith exactitude—but I wasn’t expecting anyone to be waiting for me, and I gave them no more than a cursory glance, turning immediately towards the Avenue Supal exit. Storm-driven miasma curled reddish around hurrying travelers, the blank door to the waiting room, the wheeled tea kiosk, and then a face looming suddenly out of the dimness.
“Hullo, Pleiti.”
I smiled automatically, then stared. For a moment I felt myself back in time, a student again, greeted by my closest friend after a short absence, but no: I was a Classics scholar, a plum position that after two years still seemed almost unbelievable luck, and I hadn’t seen this face in half a decade.
“Mossa? What are you doing here?”
“Ah. Well.” Mossa looked around. “Perhaps we could talk somewhere more private?”
I had almost forgotten we were standing in the middle of one of the busier stations on Giant. “Come along, then.”
I led her up Supal, which hadn’t changed much since Mossa and I were students: the typically curlicued lanterns; the tea shops designed for every taste from quiet to rowdy, basic to exclusive; the prayer booths in a range of denominations; the quaint bookshops in every specialization. Shops offered every need of the scholar, from magnifying eyewear to artificial lighting, tactile enhancement, containers of various stimulants, auditory recorders, atmospheric mufflers for every part of the body, hypnotic hummers, erudite guides to the university, plated reminder mechanisms. The uneven paving of the street creaked somewhat underfoot, aged and familiar, and rose steeply away from the station, allowing for the many unsightly functions of platform life to take place below the walking level. That wasn’t necessary on more recent platforms, but when Valdegeld was constructed, heating, to take one example, was propounded through vast mechanisms of steam and turbine, many of which still clunked along below the quaint buildings lining the way, emitting drifts of vapor that mingled with the motley planetary fog.
The roof that covered the station had extended up to this point, shielding us from the worst of the tempest and containing a hint of warmth, but a rush of chilled yellowish fog ahead signaled the shift to the university proper. Even Mossa, always so contained, grimaced at the sight of the storm playing out across the high steeples of Valdegeld. We dashed across the open plaza, the perturbation churning gaseous clouds above around and through, and delved into the narrow alleys of the university.
The streets there were crooked and uneven, burrowing among high buildings constructed in the sinuous style of a century and a half earlier, a fashion that, though outmoded, still held a powerful enough grip on the popular imagining to thrill me every time I looked up at them. I took us up Potash Lane, a slightly less direct route to my rooms but more sheltered. I searched, as always, for the almost unnoticeable seam where inconsistencies in the surface of the platform traced the plating of an ancient satellite, snagged from its orbit and hammered flat. I loved Valdegeld’s quaintness, its details of salvage and bricolage, unlike the newer, uniform platforms pressed in enormous pieces from asteroid metal. A glance at Mossa, however, told me she was feeling the cold more than any architectural appreciation or, for that matter, nostalgia, and I hastened to lead her to my rooms. We cluttered into the archway entrance, I called a quick halloo to the porter huddled in the warm lodge, and then we were up the stairs and piling into my own scholar’s suite.
Automatically, I banged the switch for the fire, and cheerful blue flames leapt into existence. “Vile out,” I commented, unwrapping my atmoscarf and holding my hand out for Mossa’s so I could hang it up. She handed it to me and started a slow circuit of the room, examining the furnishings and accoutrements, lingering over the reproduction of a Classical atlas, the tiny cubical qibla astrolabe, the engraving of an antelope. I watched her, not without a quick internal reassessment of my decorating and comfort choices.
“Well then,” I said, to distract us both. “What are you doing here?”
Mossa, I was pleased to see, looked a little ashamed. “I thought you’d suggest a café or something. But I’m glad to see your rooms. The scholar suites are—”
“What. Are you doinghere?”
Mossa looked even more uncomfortable. “It’s work.”
I considered that. “I haven’t done anything bad.”
Mossa rolled her eyes. “Was looking for your help.”
“Oh. With what? Wait. Myhelp? What kind of help?”
Mossa sighed, loosened her jacket. “May I sit?”
I frowned at her, but she was just as chilled and damp as I was. “Oh, very well. I suppose you want tea, too?”
“And scones? I’ve been thinking about the university scones from the moment I turned in this direction.”
I frowned more, but again, same. I touched the order buttons. “Well then?”
Mossa looked like she really needed that tea. “Something’s happened that we’re having trouble understanding.”
“And you think I can help?” Mossa lifted her eyes to my stare. “Something at Valdegeld?” But there were many people at Valdegeld; would she really come to me first? “Something happened related to the Classics faculty?” I was a scholar, yes, but with only two years I was a very junior one. “Do you need an introduction to one of the University administrators? The dean of the Classics faculty, or the University rector, perhaps?” The Investigators could have gone directly to any of those people, but Mossa might prefer a more oblique route.
“Maybe.” Mossa stood again, and started pacing.
Perhaps it wasn’t the university. “Or,” I tried, “there was a problem with the mauzooleum?”
She winced. “Pleasetell me you don’t call it that.”
“I’ll tell you youbest not call it that when we’re speaking with the Chief Preserver, if that’s who you need.”
“Hardly a preserver when they were all already dead,” Mossa commented, and I glared.
“You’re going to argue the finer points of linguistics with me?”
“Why not? I thought,” her voice perilously gentle, “that your job was mainly numbers.”
Fortunately, at that moment, the bell rang, and I went to retrieve the scones from the dumbwaiter. “Less time than it takes for a plate of university scones,” I said, setting them on the low table before the fire, “for us to quarrel.” I fetched my sugar, cinnamon, cocoa, and garam masala shakers, and the pot of honey, and added them to the table. Mossa said nothing, though she did not immediately snag a scone, either. I sighed, and settled myself on the cushions to one side of the table, gesturing her towards the other. “Any word, if
there’s a problem with the mau—with the Koffre Institute for Earth Species Preservation, isn’t that more important?” I took a scone, and after a moment Mossa did the same.
The requisite chewing delayed our conversation for a few minutes, which was probably a feature. The fire crackled, crumbs melted against my tongue, outside the gases furled and unfurled and the vast planet turned its swift rotation. At last Mossa, having ingested the entirety of her scone, picked up her tea cup, drank, and put it down again.
“A man has disappeared.”
“Disappeared?”
“He was seen on a remote platform yesterday morning, and very thoroughly gone from it after an interval in which no railcars, communal or private, arrived or left.”
“Radiation and recombinants!” I exclaimed, startled into the epithet. “Are you saying he threw himself into the planet?”
Mossa had taken advantage of my interjection to claim another scone and dust it with cinnamon, and she regarded me with raised eyebrow as she chewed her first bite. “An exuberant verb you’ve chosen. But yes, the assumption is he stepped, leaped, or—”
“Was thrown off the platform,” I said, putting down my own halffinished morsel. I remembered that she was here for a reason. “Did I know him?”
She shot her eyes at me again but, unsurprisingly, did not answer. Mossa would tell the story in her own way; it was part of her method. “He told someone on the platform, before he went over the edge, that he worked at Valdegeld.” There was a speaking pause.
“Pleased with himself, was he?”
Mossa acknowledged this with an angled, noncommittal nod. “We checked for missing scholars here—he was old for a student and got a description from those who saw him, on the platform and on the railcar he took to get there. We’re fairly certain of his identity.” A dismissive gesture. “Hardly difficult; there are very few eager to visit the platform whence he disappeared. But he didn’t go there from Valdegeld. His journey had originated at the Preservation Institute.”
I waited through her pensive silence, then said, “That seems a bit thin. You wouldn’t have come to me based on that, so I suppose I know him.”
Her eyes flicked at me, and I wondered what elaborate potential storylines had distracted her from my presence. “He arrived at the Preservation Institute directly from here,” she said, brisk now. “He is employed at Valdegeld, in the Classics faculty; yes, I imagine you know him. Bolien Trewl.”
My recollection of the melancholy reason for referring to him did not arrive in time to contain my habitual response to the name.
“Know him, and dislike him,” Mossa stated.
I attempted a dismissive gesture, then gave up on it as a bad job. “Nobody likes him—I should say, none of my friends like him. He has his own crowd, I’m sure.”
“I hope so,” Mossa said mildly. “I would like to talk to them. But first tell me why you and others do not.”
“Ugh, you know the type.” I grinned at the impatient expression on her face, which said I will, as soon as you tell me which it is. “Self-important. Believes his own research is the most important consideration in any circumstance, except possibly his own comfort, preference, and consequence.”
“But his research is important to him? Or only a means of making himself important?”
“Let me think. I’ve never wanted to spend this much time analyzing him before.” I took another bite, chewed, swallowed, and drank some tea. “I think his research is vestigially important to him; that is, I think he chose his area because he believed in it, but by this point it’s important because he believes in it, rather than the other way around. And he is truly unbearable on the subject, far more than in other conversations, although he does like his own opinion about even the most trivial things.” I tapped the plate between us. “The first time I met him, in my first week back here after when I came back for the scholar post, he told me that the prickly pear scones were the best, I would be sure to like them the most, none of the others were worth trying.” Years ago Mossa would have rolled her eyes in appreciation of this comemierdería with me,
perhaps spouted some devastating critique; now she nodded distantly, understanding but not participating. I found myself deeply disliking her professionalism.
“What was his research area?” she asked.
I took another scone in compensation for emotional distress. “Altitude, he believed altitude explained everything there was to explain in organism distribution. Ugh, he could go on for hours. And I will say,” I added around my crumbly bite, “that while he must have considered others and chosen it out of some reasoning, at this point it is all to his greater glory and I don’t think he could hear the import of a word against it.”
“What else?” Mossa asked. “You worked with him?”
“Thankfully, no. It would probably have happened at some point, but I’ve managed to stay on different projects. I did see him every once in a while. He was in another hall, but sometimes I would be there for dinner with a friend or I’d notice him at the table here. Or at the station, here or at the Preservation Institute—Tempests! I saw him five days ago!”
Mossa did not jerk upright, as I really thought she might have, just raised her eyelids a bit. “At the station?”
“In effect,” I said, a bit disgruntled to be so drawn in. “And do you know, I thought at the time he looked a bit odd? But I was in a hurry, on my way back from the Institute, about to leave for the farm.”
That got her at least shocked enough to pick up her cup of tea, and then put it down again and lift the pot to refresh us both. And her voice was sharp. “In what way odd?”
“Looked harried. I caught his eye—not on purpose!—and he turned away, wanted nothing to do with me. Oh stars, he was off to do something desperate, wasn’t he?”
“Very probably,” Mossa said. “But what?”
Chapter 2
Mossa submerged into her own calculations, playing out different storylines I supposed, focused and silent except for distracted slurps of tea. I refilled her cup once, and for a time lost myself in my own thoughts: a possible new configuration of the data from my current study; a film I had requested from the library for comparative purposes; how long Mossa might stay.
“Well.” I stirred. “What will you do? Are you planning to stay here and speak with Bolien’s friends, or are you going straight on to the Preservation Institute?”
Mossa’s eyes were on the blue and yellow flames of the fire, but I felt observed nonetheless. “Would you be so good”—I glanced at her sharply; such stilted courtesy was unlike Mossa, at least in her dealings with me—“as to accompany me to speak with his friends and colleagues? I would undoubtedly miss the nuances of the academic community without your assistance,” she added apologetically, as I glanced first at the inclement weather vibrating the window and then at my desk, laden with notes that I hoped to subsume into a data set, and that (someday!) into recommendations. “If you are not too overcome with work. I will buy you dinner, naturally. That way we can have a chance to catch up as well. I promised myself a meal at Slow Burn while I was here.”
In truth, I could hardly have refused her; not only our desiccated friendship, but also the responsibility of assisting as I could with the inquiry into a colleague’s sorry end—and a bit of curiosity forthwith— required it. I had even been telling myself that a chat with Bolien’s colleagues might be useful for my work; while we were both in the Classics faculty, that prestigious discipline was enormous, with many subfields, committees, and convoluted relationships, and I could use a refresher on his area and their latest findings. Still, it cheered me disproportionately that Mossa was allocating time for a more leisurely conversation with me (even then, I did not imagine that said discussion would be work-free).
“Oh, very well,” I said, hoping it sounded good-naturedly putupon rather than ungracious. “Let me just look—” The university
directory was on my desk, a hard laminate in the shape of the university’s convoluted footprint itself, with notches for each of the buildings and overlay lenses that could flip on and off showing different types of data. I found Bolien’s assigned laboratory. “Ah. Silahvet. Not toofar from here.” I glanced again at the window, but there was no help for it. “We can go ask whoever works near his desk and go on from there.” I checked his supervisory committee while I was at it.
“Do you know anyone in the geography department?”
“Of course,” I said, running through my acquaintances there in mind. “Perhaps—”
“Not Classical geography,” Mossa interrupted. “Modern.”
I stared. “Moderngeography? Even Bolien’s theories weren’t that outlandish.” I smiled at my own pun, but Mossa, usually enamored of such wordplay, was distracted.
“Perhaps it won’t be necessary,” she murmured.
“I daresay I can find someone if you want,” I said doubtfully. “But you know as well as I do that the Classical and Modern sides don’t mix much. I know more people in Speculative than in Modern.”
“No matter.” She swept her atmoscarf around her. “Shall we?”
The surface of Valdegeld platform was heated by the mechanisms at work below it, so at least the soles of our feet were warm as we fought through the freezing foggy gale. Even so, I was flustered and shivering by the time we reached Bolien’s laboratory, well on the other side of Crickle Lane and halfway up the slope to the southern edge. We climbed the bridge over the 0°30' line, skirted the massive building that housed students belonging to Kofwanser College, and finally found the succor of Silahvet’s looped entrance way.
Mossa looked around as we shook the fog from our wraps. “I don’t think I ever came in here,” she said.
“I doubt I did either, back then,” I agreed, leading the way to Bolien’s desk. “Strictly scholars or certified researchers, no classes. Not much reason for undergraduates to come through, unless you know one of the scholars, perhaps.”
Now, as an appointed scholar myself, it was easy enough for me to identify and approach Bolien’s colleagues. I havered a little at the first desk, not particularly wanting to give the reason for our questions, but Mossa slid easily into that role, explaining the situation dispassionately and calmly. I tried not to feel grateful; it was a great deal easier for her than it would have been for me, from both custom and inclination, as well as her lack of personal connection with the missing man.
It was made easier in that no one seemed to have known Bolien well, or liked him much. “The problem was,” a food-chain scholar told us apologetically, “he only ever wanted to speak about work, and when he spoke about work he only wanted to talk about his work. He probably didn’t see it that way, he probably thought he was having decent conversations with plenty of interdisciplinary information exchange, but he couldn’t shut up about his own stuff and had no interest in anyone else’s, and it showed.”
All of this was as I had expected based on my few experiences with the man. There was however one piece of gossip that I hadn’t been aware of: Bolien’s desk-neighbor, a woman who specialized in the arctic ecosystem in the difficult pre-exploration era, claimed that Bolien had applied for my job. “Wouldn’t have minded him moving, but I was still pleased when you got it instead,” she said, nodding at me. Unable to find any appropriate words for that sentiment, I tweaked my fingers in a quick appreciation gesture.
“Sorry, I realize that’s not what you were asking about…”
“On the contrary,” Mossa replied. “Everything we can learn about his character is helpful.”
The scholar looked at me in puzzlement and I tried to wave her concerns away; I was so familiar with my friend’s approach that I had forgotten it could seem odd to other people.
Mossa continued. “What about colleagues? Anyone who worked with him particularly?”
“Not that I knew of. People would go to him when they had altitude questions, even if they grimaced about having to listen to the bluster. But he didn’t have a particular mentor or patron, not that I ever heard.”
“We’ve already heard in general about Trewl’s research, but can you tell us of any recent developments? A specific problem he’d been working on lately, or something he was excited about?”
She considered, toying with a stylus. A parakeet on a wall perch above her desk chirped sleepily. “The last area I recall him talking about was the problem of ‘sea level’ and what that means over time.” She shrugged. “Normally I filtered him out, but that has relevance for my research too. Not that he had anything groundbreaking to say about it. And I wouldn’t say he was especially excited, either.”
“Was he feeling low, lately? Depressed?”
“Oh no. Arrogant as ever. Can’t really believe he would deprive all of us of his company, to be honest.”
In that, everyone we spoke to concurred: Bolien had shown no signs of melancholy.
We emerged some time later from Incaster Lab, where we had been directed to find additional colleagues of the missing researcher, with no further information: he had been arrogant—not an unusual quality for a Classics scholar, and in between interviews I tried to tell Mossa I had indeed found some less obnoxious examples to be friends with since I myself was appointed—he had been enthusiastic about his research, and he had not shown any signs of despair.
“Any ideas about that Modern geographer?” Mossa asked, as we stood half-sheltered from the enormous wind, but at least isolated from anyone’s hearing.
“But—” I stopped. I knew how Mossa worked; with an effort, I could follow her thinking. “You want to know why he went to that platform.”
She nodded. “If he threw himself off, it’s conceivable, though odd, that he would go to some symbolic and remote place like the easternmost platform. Although even in extremity that seems out of character for him. But if he did not plan to, and certainly nothing that we have heard makes him sound like a person in despair or agony…”
“Then why did he go to that platform?” I finished. “There was really nothing there?”
“Four residential buildings and a pub. With rather good food,” she added dryly, “I suppose that’s a possibility. But he didn’t so much as have a conversation with anyone. At least beyond boasting of his affiliation with Valdegeld.”
“Are you certain?”
She shrugged. “At the moment, I have no reason to disbelieve the people there. If we find anything that suggests they are lying, I will question them again. But…”
“Modern geographer, yes, I know.” I squinted up at the swirling, motley clouds of the atmosphere. The perturbation was still too strong for me to make out even a blurry sun, but I knew it must be late. “It’s near nightfall. Quick bite while I think?”
When humans first settled on Giant, they were horrified at the speedy rotation that would fit more than two complete day-night cycles into one of the sort they were used to, and arranged satellite mirrors to mimic the diurnal cycle on Earth. However, the mirrors proved overly complicated and inadequate for a number of reasons —it is far more disconcerting to have daylight flash on and off repeatedly due to a faulty joint rotator than to deal with a new schedule—and it turned out to be relatively easy for most people to adjust to being awake for a day and a night and then sleeping for a day and a night, even if it did sometimes lead to ennuis in aligning schedules. “You’re fortunate I slept on the railcar,” I added, starting towards my favorite of the nearby canteens.
Mossa did not reply directly, and I wondered whether she had found a way to check, during her investigation of Bolien Trewl, which diurnal cycle I was on. “Are your parents well?”
Again, I peered at her, unsure if this was a genuine query, a demonstration of her perspicacity, or an attempt to ascertain whether I was on visiting terms with someone else outside of Valdegeld. “How did you know I was there? How did you know to meet me at the station, come to that?”
Mossa hunched her shoulders. “Nothing terribly Investigatory. Your porter said you were away but expected back early today, and
earlier you mentioned ‘the farm.’”
“Oh. Did I?”
“I assumed only that of your parents would merit the definite article.”
“Yes. Of course. And they are well enough, thank you. Working hard as always, although I convinced them to take a brief holiday off-platform while I was there.” The satellite mirrors originally designed to replicate Earth’s rhythms had been more usefully urgently, even—repurposed to focus sunlight on crop cultivation platforms, like the one where I had grown up. And there was the rest of my answer, indeed: Mossa had guessed I was coming from my parents, had known I would be exhausted after helping them and readjusting to the heat and additional sunlight, and would certainly sleep as much as I could on the railcar journey.
Even as much as I could hadn’t been much, however, and I confess to yawning a few times as we dined at my preferred canteen, The Stretch Goal, on bowls of the stew they kept simmering. Perhaps some of that was boredom, however. I was running through the Modern geography department in my mind, trying to decide whom to approach, but Mossa must have seen from my face that there was no one particularly appealing.
“If you think it best to send a message first,” she said, dabbing at the dregs of her bowl with a doughy dumpling, “we could start with the Preservation Institute and return to talk to the Moderns.”
“It might be better—wait. What do you mean we? I am not going to the mauzooleum tonight. I have a paper to finish.”
Mossa has a number of different expressionless glares. She gave me one of them. “The Preservation Institute was the departure point for Bolien’s trip. Especially since we have not found any evidence of a trigger for his disappearance here—”
“I understand,” I said, impatiently. “But why do Ineed to go?”
“You have a unique perspective.”
“Hardly unique. There are countless academics who make frequent use of the Institute…”
Mossa waved that aside. “But you also know me, and how I work. Explaining it to someone else would take too long.”
I could not restrain a feeling of warmth as if that were praise or even affection and not merely a statement of fact.
Believing in signs of affection from Mossa was a trap, because it led to expecting signs of affection.
“I am sorry to postpone our dinner,” Mossa went on, “but I believe we should proceed to the Preservation Institute as soon as possible.”
I would have grumbled for the show of it, but I was not going to pretend that a meal, however delicious, was more important than investigating someone’s disappearance, even someone I hadn’t liked. “I suppose we can catch up on the railcar ride. As long as you invite me to Slow Burn another time,” I added as I followed her outside, not wanting to lose that prospect entirely.
She turned towards me, cheek pressing against the winds, only her eyes visible through the atmoscarf. “You can go there any time. Or…”
I did not force her to ask about my finances, which were not overflowing but not in a state I could complain about. “I can’t go there with you any time,” I pointed out, and turned my attention back to fighting my way towards the appropriate station. “It has been a long time, Mossa.”
“Indeed.” After a pause, she went on. “If we leave directly for the Preservation Institute, we may not make it back before daybreak.”
I shrugged. “The journey is short, and my rooms not far from the station. We can return late if necessary.”
She waited a few steps before asking, “Is there somewhere we could stay there?”
“If it is necessary,” I said, surprised. “But it seems easier to return and then go back the following day. Or perhaps I am simply inured to that railcar ride through custom.” A thought occurred to me. “Do you have a place to sleep here?”
She turned back into the wind, head down. “The Investigators have rooms, or will cover the cost of one for the night, wherever I need to sleep.”
Chapter 3
The railcar for the Koffre Institute for Earth Species Preservation left from the smallest of Valdegeld’s three rail stations. The railcars were frequent, however, and we waited only a few minutes. The cabins were not particularly luxurious, but at that time of day there were few travelers and we had the long, rose velvet benches to ourselves.
“Well,” I said, stretching my legs out till they almost reached her bench where it faced mine, an excusable indulgence since the heating pipes ran under the benches. “We have spent most of the day speaking to people who knew the man.” I stopped, not wanting to say it.
“And nothing suggests he was in a mood to step into the crushing and freezing embrace of a gaseous abyss,” Mossa finished.
I reached over and tweaked the knob on the grate, turning the fire up a little higher. “None of them liked him much.”
Mossa tipped an eyebrow. “I nonetheless had the impression they would have noticed despondency … although perhaps he was adept at hiding his moods…”
“I meant, maybe that was a reason. Nobody liked him. If that made him melancholy, I don’t think those are the people he would have told.”
“True,” Mossa said, tapping her knee, eyes on the swirling sea of fog outside the window.
“You don’t seem convinced,” I observed. “But what is the alternative? Someone on that isolated platform pushed him off?”
“Hmm.”
“He was unlikeable, but he was only there for a few hours, right? Or is it possible he had some previous connection with someone there?”
“Perhaps. They might cover for one of their neighbors.”
She said it neutrally, but I grimaced, certain our thoughts were running along similar lines. Sparsely populated platforms could be close-knit, and have little reason to help Investigators from denser parts of Giant’s ring and platform network; if that was the case,
getting one of them to tell the truth might be impossible. (And indeed, if Bolien Trewl had gone off somewhere and done something terrible to one of these people, made himself so unbearable that one of them had broken the anathema on breaching the edge of a platform, was it our affair to condemn them for that?) However, it was rare to find a small community so truly united. Imagining my parents’ farming platform, which they shared with six other agricultural cultivators, I thought it more likely that petty spite bring a quick, if inconspicuous, denunciation.
“Could someone have followed him and hidden?”
“No one else disembarked from his railcar, and someone who arrived before him would almost certainly have been noticed. It really was a very scant place.”
“Maybe he did jump, then,” I said glumly, and we sat the rest of the journey in silence.
The Koffre Institute for Earth Species Preservation was established only shortly after Giant was settled by a geneticist named Krel Koffre. It was astonishing, now, to see it: platform after platform branching out from the conjunction of two rings that formed the station. Unlike most platforms on Giant, these were layered, steps leading up to new areas, so that you could get some sense of the scale from the railcar, even if you couldn’t see how far it stretched to either side, which I knew was very far indeed.
There had, after all, been many species on Earth, once.
Even the small subset of that number whose genetic information had been collected before they were driven out of existence, and the far smaller fraction of those who had been resurrected for the mauzooleum, still resulted in an extremely large panoply of species. An extraordinary amount of space had been dedicated to recreating their habitats in this entirely hostile environment.
It was an almost unthinkable extravagance on a planet where there was no land that had not been constructed. Agricultural and residential space were still considered dreadfully scarce. But the mauzooleum had been created in a post-traumatic moment. Koffre had been a part of the bio-preservationist movement at the end of
the world and used their moral and scientific legitimacy to argue that keeping the species of Earth in their potential form in seed banks and on data caches was not enough: that as many examples as possible should be gestated into living plants and animals. Moreover, during the initial settlement scientists—biological and social—were deeply, almost hysterically concerned about the consequences of living on a planet with no other life larger than microbes; gestating Earth species was considered a necessity for humans. Now, with cats and cockroaches infesting almost every platform, the extravagant facilities developed to address that concern seemed laughable, but the administrators of the Preservation Institute had guarded its historic privilege jealously, and their links with Valdegeld helped protect it as well. How, after all, would Earth ever be restored if the animals and plants could not be reconstituted, or could not be cared for once they were? How could the project of restoration and reseeding, the entire purpose of the vaunted field of Classical studies, be understood without access to this living resource? And many non-scholars visited as well, finding some importance in seeing for themselves these creatures and plants, even if they were not, quite, in their native habitat; a respite perhaps, or a warped window on what our lost life on Earth might have been like.
I had visited often enough for my work that I had my routine of where to look on the approach. Out the right side of the car and up to the midlevel platform, where if I was lucky I would catch the wide stripes of a zebra. The feeding trough for the mammoths just beyond that. Then to the left, where a field of wildflowers bordered the rail. Just beyond them the jaguar could sometimes be spotted if it chose to lounge near the edge of its habitat. Back to the right for the giant tortoise. And, almost invisible at the very upper limit of the window, a dark blur that I knew to be a vat of fantastically rare and expensive soil, literal Earth, populated with worms.
There were of course animal rights activists who argued that the animals shouldn’t have been reconstituted to live in what was, essentially, captivity. This perspective had not picked up many adherents; probably, I always thought, because many of the species in the mauzooleum had more space to wander around in than most
human residential platforms offered. If they were in captivity on this inhospitable planet, then so were we.
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people, it does not become the gentleman from Ohio to rise here in his place, and undertake to charge that the Democratic party adopted that rule, after he has sent out to the country and published a speech, revised and printed in pamphlet form, in which he purports to give the facts as they occurred in 1849.”
Mr. Giddings: “I repeat what I said when I first rose, that the Democratic party in its caucus, speaking through its committee, did agree to the resolution.”
Mr. Edmundson: “I want to let the gentleman from Ohio know that he is asserting what is not true. I am stating facts within my own knowledge. The Democratic caucus voted down the resolution, and refused to adopt it. Now, any statement made in conflict with that, I say this from my own personal knowledge, is a statement which is not true, and he who makes it knows, at the time he is making it, that it is not true.”
Mr. Giddings:
“‘Go, show your slaves how choleric you are, And make your bondmen tremble,’
but do not come here to make any imputations upon me.”
Mr. Edmundson (advancing towards Mr. Giddings, who had sprung Shakespeare on him unexpectedly): “I want to hear what the gentleman from Ohio is saving.”
Mr. Giddings: “Let gentlemen keep cool.”
Mr. Edmundson: “I will keep cool, if you will state the facts.”
At this point there were loud cries of “Order, order,” and much confusion and excitement in the hall.
Mr. Cobb: “When the gentlemen from Ohio stated that the Democratic party had adopted as a party the plurality rule, I unhesitatingly denied that statement. When he said that the resolution was introduced by Mr. Stanton, he read the language of Mr. Stanton to show that he made the statement to the House, and
to the country, to that effect. I stated then that it was a misconstruction of the language of Mr. Stanton, and that it must have been so from the facts as they were. Now, Mr. Clerk, I ask this House, and I put it to the candor of every man on this floor, if, at the time this declaration was made, it was not its understanding that the language quoted was the language of Mr. Stanton?”
Several members: “He so stated, expressly.”
Mr. Cobb: “I put it to the memory and candor of gentlemen here, if the gentleman from Ohio did not so intend it, then he made a charge against the party without any particle of ground to stand on. If he did intend it, it was an effort to falsify the record on which he was standing. This language was the language of the reporter, giving an account of the proceedings of the day, and does not occur in connection with Mr. Stanton’s name at all. There is a vote intervening between the time when Mr. Stanton addressed the House, and the remarks here made by the reporter, which had no earthly connection with them whatever. Where, then, is the point of the gentleman’s remarks when he charges me with sitting by and allowing Mr. Stanton to state that the plurality proposition was the result of an agreement between the two parties, unless it be because he had put in Mr. Stanton’s mouth the language of the reporter? I submit the facts to the House; I shall not characterize them.”
Mr. Orr: “Since the debate commenced, Mr. Stanton has come within the limits of this hall. I have had an interview with him, and he has authorized me to state, that when the proposition to elect by plurality was presented to the Democratic caucus, it was almost unanimously rejected by them, and that when he offered the plurality resolution he did it upon his own individual responsibility.”
These crushing refutations of the charges of Mr. Giddings raise a strong doubt of his honesty in this matter. He was a sharp politician, and sought without regard to the means to elect Mr. Banks Speaker of the House.
The Know-Nothings, recruited as were the Republicans from the same parent stem of John Adams Federalism, were the allies of the Sectionalists led by Mr. Giddings in 1856. The folly of the Southern
Know-Nothings in the great conflict over the Speakership in the Thirty-fourth Congress was remarkable.
Some of them, like Zollicoffer and Humphrey Marshall, were afterwards such violent Secessionists that they became Generals in the Confederate army. Even Henry Winter Davis was so much opposed to the Republican party at this time, and for several years after, that he denounced it as a miserable, useless faction, and sneeringly asked, “Why cumbers it the ground?” Mr. Zollicoffer, a Southern man, of no mean powers, with surprising inconsistency refused to vote for a Democratic candidate for Speaker when none other had the remotest chance to beat Banks, and at the same time inveighed against Mr. Campbell, a Pennsylvania Know-Nothing, for voting for Banks, and thereby aiding the Sectionalists in opening the door for disunion and civil war. These men and their congeners in bigotry, like the blood-stained fanatic Lord George Gordon before them, strove to excite a religious war, and preached proscription of foreigners, and persecution of Catholics in the American Congress. No union with slaveholders, was the platform of Joshua R. Giddings; no-Popery, and no citizenship for foreigners, the platform of Henry Winter Davis.
“I go against the Catholics,” said Mr. Cullen of Delaware, during the same Speakership contest. “I never will support them. They are not fit to be supported by Americans. The people of the State from which I come look upon them with abhorrence. A Catholic priest, a short time ago, came among us. He was a stranger. He taught the doctrine of purgatory. After he had proclaimed that doctrine, an honorable gentleman of the State of Delaware, and who at the last election ran for Governor on the same ticket with myself, declared that he ought to be egged! I vote against the Catholics!”
Mr Dowdell, of Alabama: “I am exceedingly pained at the spectacle which has been presented to-night. When Rome was burning Nero was fiddling and dancing. Now, sir, we are standing upon a slumbering volcano. Upon our borders in the common territory of this country, our people are marshalling their forces to try the great question whether they are able to govern themselves, it may be with rifles in their hands. I have been reminded by the
ludicrous scenes witnessed here of a parallel to be found in a book entitled, ‘Georgia Scenes.’ Ned Brace, the hero of the story, happened to be in a city during the prevalence of a great fire, the flames in red volumes were rising higher and higher each moment, the people were running to and fro in great consternation, women and children were screaming through the streets, and the midnight fire-bells were sending out their rapid and startling sounds, when Ned quietly took his position on the sidewalk. About this time a large old man, nearly out of breath, came running by in great haste, whose home was threatened with destruction perhaps, and was abruptly stopped by Ned with the interrogatory: ‘Sir, can you tell me where I can find Peleg Q. C. Stone?’ ‘Damn Peleg Q. C. Stone, my house is on fire;’ was the impatient reply. Now, sir, while the fire of civil war is threatening to be kindled upon our borders, questions are propounded here quite as impertinent at this time of danger, and calculated to provoke similar impatience, if not a similar reply. I have no fear that any party in this country opposed to religious liberty will ever be strong enough to control its legislation.”
Mr. Paine, of North Carolina: “I ask whether any gentleman in this House is willing to see the Government of the United States, and the Congress of the United States, in the hands of the Roman Catholics of this country? This is a matter which enters into the private feelings, however unwilling members may be to expose it. These very gentlemen themselves would not trust the government of the country and Congress in the hands of Roman Catholics.”
Mr. Valk, of New York: “The honorable gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Dowdell) took occasion to draw the attention of the House to the once living embodiment of that portrait on my right—that of La Fayette. I frankly and freely do honor to his memory. But the gentleman forgets one remark which fell from the lips of that man when living. He said: ‘If ever the liberties of this country are destroyed it will be by Catholic priests.’”
Mr. Bowie of Maryland: “Sparks says that is a lie.”
At this point Mr. Kelly tried to get the floor to repel the furious assaults of the Know-Nothings upon his church, of which the
preceding extracts are but a few specimens.
Mr. Kelly: “I should like to explain my vote.”
The Clerk: “The clerk would remind the gentleman from New York that it is too late. He can proceed, however, if no objection is made.” There were loud cries of “object!”
Mr. Kelly: “Does the Clerk decide that I am not in order?”
The Clerk: “The Clerk makes no decision.”
Mr. Pennington: “I move that the gentleman from New York (Mr. Kelly) have leave to explain his vote, and I do so because the gentleman is a Catholic, and the only one I believe of that faith upon this floor. I think that under the circumstances it would be only common courtesy to hear him.” Loud cries of “Hear him.”
Mr. Bowie: “Hear him; he is the only Catholic here.”
Mr. Washburn: “I will yield to the gentleman for ten minutes.” Mr. Kelly, without previous preparation, now proceeded to make his second speech in the House, January 9, 1856, his first having been delivered December 19, 1855, in reply to Mr. Whitney, a New York Know-Nothing.
Mr. Kelly: “I am aware, Mr. Clerk, that it is very improper to bring religious matters into legislative business at all but when I hear such remarks as have fallen from the intelligent gentleman who has just spoken, I feel that it becomes me, as a member of the religious body which the gentleman has been assailing, to say something, at least, in its defense.
“The accusation is made here that the Catholic religion is dangerous to the institutions of this Republic. Sir, no man possessed of any intelligence would give any weight to a charge of that sort. When have the Catholic clergy urged their flocks to support particular individuals for office? When have they from their pulpits urged their congregations to support particular measures, or to vote for particular men? There is not in the history of this country an instance in which the Catholic clergy have so acted. But can the same be said of other religious denominations in this country? In the
Eastern portion of the Union you will frequently find ministers from their pulpits invoking their flocks to vote for measures which interest them, and the section of the Union to which they belong. Now, Mr. Clerk, I am a Catholic, and I love this Union. I defy any man in this Congress to say that he is a better citizen, or more devoted to the true interests of this Union than I am. This is not only my sentiment, but it is the sentiment of the religious body to which I belong. It is the sentiment of our priesthood.
“I let the accusation that the Catholic religion is dangerous to our beloved country, go for what it is worth; for I am satisfied that no sane man would make such an assertion. But this charge has been frequently made since we first met here. When my colleague, Mr. Valk, made several charges against the Catholic religion, I had not an opportunity to say one word in reply but, sir, I am surprised that the gentleman from Long Island, a man of intelligence and a Christian, as I take him to be, should rise upon this floor, and denounce his fellow Christians because he differs with them in opinion upon religious questions.” Mr. Valk, who had indulged in such denunciation, nevertheless, made a denial at this point.
Mr. Kelly: “The gentleman from North Carolina, Mr. Paine, asks, would you like to see this Government in the hands of the Catholic people? Suppose that it was in the hands of the Catholic people, have the Catholic people of this Union ever been false to its true interests? Why, sir, look at the early history of our country, and look to that State which borders upon this District. A Catholic community existed there, which extended a liberality to all other religions that could not be found in other colonies at that time. While Calvert, Lord Baltimore, was founding a free colony there, religious persecution was going on in other colonies; and when people were persecuted in other colonies, where did they go that they might worship God according to the dictates of their own consciences? They came to the Catholic colony of Maryland. These are the Catholic people to whom the honorable gentleman from Alabama has referred. Such, sir, is the history of the Catholics in this country, and such has it ever been. These people when they leave their homes in Germany, in Ireland, or in whatever country they may be found, and come here, it
is to make this country their home. They imbibe the spirit of true patriotism before they leave the Old World. They come here with their parents, brethren, and friends, because here they can enjoy their liberty. And tell me, sir, is not the assertion, that they are inimical to your liberties unfounded? Are not the people who make it blinded by prejudice and bigotry? Why, sir, foreigners have always composed a large portion of the army of the country. They have fought side by side with our native-born citizens in every battle that has been fought from the earliest period of our existence as a nation, down to the present time. They have been working in a common cause to promote common objects—the blessings and prosperity of this Union. Let me say to this House, if they come not here with wealth, they come with willing hands to work and earn their bread upon your public works, from their very commencement to their completion. How could your great public works have been constructed without these men?”
The Know-Nothings, not liking Kelly’s argument, at this point made a determined effort to cut him off.
Mr Russell Sage, of New York: “I move that this House do now proceed to vote for Speaker, and upon that motion I demand the previous question.”
Mr. Smith, of Alabama: “I hope the gentleman from New York, Mr. Kelly, will be allowed to proceed with his explanation.”
Mr. Eustis, of Louisiana: “I hope Mr. Kelly will be allowed to proceed by unanimous consent.”
Several members objected.
Mr. Leiter, of Ohio: “I appeal to the House to withdraw all objection, and allow the gentleman from New York to go on with his speech.” Objection was again made.
Mr. Kelly: “I do not care about proceeding further. I wished to deny the charges made by the gentleman from North Carolina, Mr. Paine, and by the gentleman from New York, Mr. Valk, and having done that I am satisfied to let the matter rest for the present.”[26]
Mr Kelly, had he not been cut off by objections, intended to read the letter of La Fayette, written from Paris in 1829 to a Protestant citizen of New York, whose guest the old patriot had been during his last visit to this country. This letter Mr. Valk had grossly perverted. At the earliest opportunity during that session Mr. Kelly replied to Mr. Valk and Mr. Smith, and read the La Fayette letter. The sentences in it which Mr. Valk had so garbled were in reality as follows:—“But I must be permitted to assure you that the fears which in your patriotic zeal you seem to entertain, that if ever the liberty of the United States is destroyed it will be by Romish priests, are certainly without any shadow of foundation whatever. An intimate acquaintance of more than half a century with the prominent and influential priests and members of that Church, both in England and America, warrant me in assuring you that you need entertain no apprehension of danger to your republican institutions from that quarter.”
FOOTNOTES:
[22] Captain Rynders died suddenly about the middle of January, 1885, having enjoyed his usual good health up to within a few hours of his demise.
[23] Life of A H Stephens, by Johnston & Browne, p 306
[24] Ibid, p. 306.
[25] Congressional Globe, 1st Session, 34th Congress, p 44, et seq.
[26] Cong. Globe, 1855-56, Thirty-first Congress, 1st Session, pp 191, et seq
CHAPTER VI.
KNOW-NOTHINGS JOIN REPUBLICANS TO ELECT BANKS SEWARD BECOMES LEADER SKETCH OF HIM DEFEAT OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY CAUSES OF IT FREQUENT FIST-FIGHTS BETWEEN MEMBERS DRUNKENNESS AND ROWDYISM IN CONGRESS ANGRY DISPUTE BETWEEN KELLY AND MARSHALL KELLY’S POPULARITY IN THE HOUSE HIS RELATIONS WITH ALEXANDER H STEPHENS
In the last chapter the strange spectacle was presented of Southern Know-Nothings, while declaring their opposition to the Abolitionists, actually aiding them to elect a Speaker, and offering as an excuse for their conduct the dread that the Catholic Church might obtain control of the Government! The Democratic caucus had adopted a resolution denouncing the enemies of civil and religious liberty. Humphrey Marshall and the Southern Know-Nothings declared this was an insult to them, and not only Marshall, but Cox of Kentucky, and Zollicoffer and Etheridge assigned the same cause as presenting an insuperable obstacle to their voting for any Democrat for Speaker The Know-Nothings and Abolitionists, having nothing in common, united to overthrow the party of the Constitution, the former to prevent the Catholics from seizing the Government, the latter to get rid of slavery. This ridiculous pretext of the Know-Nothings concerning the political ambition of the Catholic Church was most effectively answered by the fact that out of the whole 234 members of the House, and 7 Territorial Delegates, John Kelly was the only Catholic in the Thirty-fourth Congress. Mr. Kelly declared truly that no sane man would offer such an insult to the intelligence of the country, as a justification for his conduct, but Davis of Maryland, Cullen of Delaware, Whitney of New York, and other proscriptionists were wedded to their idols, and in order to strike down an imaginary enemy, they became the tools of a real one.
For nine weeks the stubborn contest continued. The country, from one end to another, was roused to feverish excitement. It was the
first time the Republican party had shown front in a National contest. Ever since the Seward-Fillmore quarrel had led to the overthrow of the Whig party in 1853, the Freesoilers had been a heterogeneous mass of the Northern population, unorganized, and with no common object in view. Mr. Seward keenly felt that success in the present struggle for the Speakership was vital to the perpetuity of the Republican party. He summoned to Washington his ablest friends, Thurlow Weed, Horace Greeley and James Watson Webb. These four famous leaders soon organized their followers in the House into a compact body Mr Zollicoffer, who subsequently became a Secessionist, and fell in battle as a Confederate General, characterized them by name on the floor of the House as the chiefs of the lobby. In the course of a speech on the 20th of December, in which he declared, with a short-sightedness unworthy of so clever a man, that he would not vote for a Democrat against Banks, Zollicoffer said: “I see here a great organization, numbering from one hundred and four to one hundred and six members, who are steadily voting for Mr. Banks. Whilst I have reason to believe that the great lobby spirits who control that organization are Greeley and Seward, and Weed and Webb, men of intellect and power at the North, who are as bitterly opposed to the American party as they are to the Democratic party, I do, upon my conscience, believe that there are gentlemen voting for Mr. Banks, from day to day, who do not belong to the Abolition, or, as they style themselves, the Republican organization. For example, I cite the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Campbell), at whose position, as he announced it here the other day, I was surprised. He says he is an American, and he spurned the idea that the American party at the North were identified with the Freesoilers of the North and yet he casts his vote steadily against a conservative National American of his own State, and gives it to Mr. Banks, a Free Soil Democrat, who has affiliated, as his record clearly shows, with the most ultra and violent Free-soil and Abolition factions.”
The Capitol was alive with intrigues and with intriguers from every part of the country The leaders retired to the Committee rooms day by day, and night by night, and runners kept them constantly informed of the movements of their adversaries. Counter-movements
followed, and new plans succeeded each other on every side without avail. It was an interesting moment for the historian; the events of the hour were big with the fate of the country. Federalism and Democracy were once more, as in the year 1801, locked in a death struggle. Then, as now, it was the party of the Constitution against the party of Centralization. The Know-Nothings held the balance of power, and of course the followers of the man who wrote his own epitaph in these words, “Author of the Declaration of Independence, and of the Statutes of Virginia for Religious Freedom,” had nothing to expect from that pestilent band of bigots. Sprung from the same parent stem of John Adams Federalism, Joshua R. Giddings and his Abolitionists, and Henry Winter Davis and his Know-Nothings, were natural allies against the disciples of Jefferson.
Seward, Weed and Greeley, to their credit be it recorded, having led the anti-Know-Nothing branch of the Whig party in New York, were not personally influential with members of the American party in Congress. But the Republican leaders were men of varied resources, and Thurlow Weed, the Whig Warwick, was equal to any emergency. The fierce philippics of Henry A. Wise against the KnowNothings in the memorable Virginia campaign just closed, and the tremendous blows which Alexander H. Stephens had dealt the party of dark lanterns in his then recent Georgia campaign, were artfully spread abroad among the proscriptionists in Congress, and the bitterness of their defeat in both those States added to the chagrin which the unanswerable arraignments of Wise and Stephens excited among them. The resolutions of the Democratic caucus, especially the one denouncing the enemies of civil and religious liberty, and the alleged contradictory constructions placed upon the KansasNebraska bill by Northern and Southern Democrats, were also used by the Seward men as electioneering appeals for Mr. Banks. In one or two Democratic quarters the Republican leaders were strongly suspected of employing corrupt appliances.
The great anti-Know-Nothing speech of Alexander H. Stephens at Augusta, largely quoted from in a former chapter of this book, was now being used by the Republicans to increase Know-Nothing enmity to the Democrats. On his part Mr. Stephens was a tower of
strength to the Administration men in the House. He appreciated the magnitude of the struggle, and was indefatigable in his attempts to defeat the Republican and Know-Nothing alliance. He rejoiced at the prominence which the Republican leaders were giving to the victory over Know-Nothingism in his own State. “I think,” he said in a letter to his brother, “the Georgia election is more talked of than that of any other State in the Union.”[27]
Lewis Cass, Stephen A. Douglas, C. C. Clay, R. M. T. Hunter, Judah P. Benjamin, and other Democratic Senators, were in frequent consultation with Alexander H. Stephens, John Kelly, Howell Cobb, James L. Orr, William A. Richardson, and other Democratic members of the House. The relative strength of the two leading parties in the House, seventy-four Democrats and one hundred and four Republicans, was the subject of anxious thought, and all at length saw that Mr. Richardson, the caucus nominee of the Democrats, could not be elected. He was, therefore, dropped, and James L. Orr substituted as the Democratic candidate. As week after week elapsed, it became evident that the dead-lock could only be broken by the abandonment of a straight party man by the Democrats. Even then no election was likely to take place unless the plurality rule should be adopted. About ten days before the end of the contest, as alluded to already, a private consultation took place between Mr. Stephens, Mr. Kelly, Mr. Orr, and Mr. Cobb, at which the nomination of William Aiken of South Carolina was decided upon as that of the only available candidate against Banks. But in order to render this movement effective, the utmost secrecy was necessary until the time should have come to bring out the new candidate. This plan originated with Mr. Stephens. Mr. Kelly entered heartily into it. To him was assigned the important duty as a Northern Democrat of putting Mr. Aiken in nomination. He was only to do this, when Banks’s election should appear imminent, or after the plurality rule had been adopted, with Orr still running against Banks. The nomination was not to be enforced by any set speech on the part of the mover, which might show design and premeditation, but was to be made as if on the impulse of the moment, and as the sudden act
of an individual who had given up all hope for Orr, and now named Aiken as a sort of dernier resort to beat Banks.
It showed that the Democratic leaders reposed extraordinary confidence in Kelly’s coolness, tact and good judgment, that he should have been selected to initiate this most delicate parliamentary move. Mr. Orr had agreed to withdraw at the proper moment in Aiken’s favor. In the meantime Mr. Stephens was to manage the preliminary strategy necessary to put the train of affairs in motion. He sounded various members in casual conversation, and found men of the most opposite views quite favorable to Aiken, as a compromise candidate against Banks. At length, February first, when it seemed probable that Banks would be elected, and at the right moment, with admirable brevity and effect, John Kelly rose and nominated Aiken. But before Orr could get the floor to withdraw in favor of Mr. Kelly’s nominee, Williamson R. W. Cobb, of Alabama, who had found members who were in the secret predicting that Aiken would win, now sprang up and in a cut-and-dried-speech, and with a great parade of theatrical language, declared that the time had arrived to name the winning man, that he had the pleasure of offering an olivebranch to all those who opposed the Republicans, and after giving everybody to know that he was about to announce a grand parliamentary stroke on the part of the Democrats, he nominated William Aiken of South Carolina. The effect of that supremely illtimed speech was to drive off votes which Mr. Aiken would have otherwise won, for as soon as it dawned upon the Whigs and KnowNothings, who had not gone over to Banks, that the latest move was a Democratic “olive-branch,” a sufficient number of them reconsidered their intention to vote for Aiken, and Banks was elected Speaker the next day, under the operation of that extra-constitutional device—the plurality rule.
The votes of John Hickman and David Barclay, two Democrats from Pennsylvania, were not given on the final ballot to the candidate supported by the Democratic side of the House. They were much censured for their course.
The Congressional Globe contains the following:
“House of Representatives, Friday, February 1, 1856.
Mr. Ball. I offer the following resolutions, and upon it I demand the previous question:
Resolved, That Nathaniel P. Banks, of Massachusetts, be, and he is hereby declared Speaker of this House for the Thirty-fourth Congress.
Mr. Kelly. I desire to offer a substitute for that resolution.
The Clerk. It is not in order to do so now, as the previous question has been demanded.
Mr. Kelly. Then I give notice, that if the pending resolution is voted down, I shall hereafter offer the following:
Resolved, That William Aiken, of South Carolina, be, and he is hereby elected Speaker of this House, for the Thirty-fourth Congress.”
The resolution declaring Banks the Speaker was lost by 102 ayes to 115 noes. Then, before Mr. Kelly could obtain the floor to name Mr. Aiken, Williamson R. W. Cobb made his fatal olive-branch speech in favor of Aiken, and Mr. Washburne of Illinois moved to lay “that olive branch on the table.” The House by a vote of 98 to 117 refused to table the resolution. The main question of declaring Aiken Speaker was then put and lost, ayes 103, noes 110. It will be observed that the vote for Aiken was larger than that for Banks. Banks 102 to 115; Aiken 103 to 110. Mr. Kelly would have had the honor of naming the Speaker but for the precipitancy of Mr. W. R. W. Cobb. The plurality rule, a device of doubtful constitutionality, was adopted the next day, February 2d, and Banks was elected. The following was the vote: Banks 103; Aiken 100; Fuller 6; Campbell 4; Wells 1. If Henry Winter Davis and the other five Know-Nothings who voted for Fuller, or even three of them, had supported Mr. Aiken, his election would have taken place. Or if only two of those KnowNothings, and the two Democratic back-sliders, Hickman and Barclay, had voted for Aiken, the defeat of Banks, and election of the Democratic candidate, in this momentous national contest would have resulted.
“After a prolonged struggle,” says Mr. Blaine in his Twenty Years of Congress, “Nathaniel P. Banks was chosen Speaker over William Aiken. It was a significant circumstance, noted at the time, that the successful candidate came from Massachusetts, and the defeated one from South Carolina. It was a still more ominous fact that Banks was chosen by votes wholly from the free States, and that every vote from the slave States was given to Mr. Aiken, except that of Mr. Cullen of Delaware, and that of Henry Winter Davis of Maryland, who declined to vote for either candidate. It was the first instance in the history of the Government in which a candidate for Speaker had been chosen without support from both sections. It was a distinctive victory of the free States over the consolidated power of the slave States. It marked an epoch.”[28] If William H. Seward and Thurlow Weed were here to explain this “distinctive victory,” as Mr. Blaine calls it, they might, if they were in a confessing mood, call the thing by another name.
It is certain that votes were thrown away on nominal candidates, and some even were given for Mr. Banks which belonged rightfully to Mr. Aiken. The members who cast those votes not only failed to reflect the sentiments of their constituencies, but in some cases openly defied and misrepresented the will of the voters to whom they owed their seats. Why these men betrayed the Democratic party in the memorable parliamentary battle which, as Mr. Blaine says “marked an epoch,” will perhaps forever remain one of the mysteries of the lobby of that eventful Thirty-fourth Congress.
John Kelly, Howard Cobb and others strongly suspected that corrupt appliances were at work.
Mr. Stephens, in a letter to his brother Linton Stephens, February 1st, 1856, said: “But for a faux pas on the part of that fool C——, I think we should have made Aiken Speaker to-day. I had set the programme for it about ten days ago. My plan was this: after the plurality rule should have been adopted (which I had all along believed after a while would be), and two ballots should have been had under it, if the Southern Know-Nothings should not indicate a purpose to go over to Orr to prevent Banks’s election (which I did not much expect them to do), then Aiken was to be put in nomination on
the floor, Orr to decline, and let the last vote be between Aiken and Banks. From my knowledge of the House, its present tone and temper, knowledge of Aiken and the estimation he was held in by several of the scatterers, I believed he would beat Banks. This I communicated to a few, and a few only. I gave Cobb, of Georgia, my idea; he was struck with it, and communicated it to a few others. It took finely. I sounded some of the Western Know-Nothings,— Marshall and others,—and found that they could be brought into it. I said nothing of my plan, but simply asked carelessly how Aiken would do. I found that he would do for them. But after his name began to be talked of, he got so popular in the minds of many that C ——, a fool, plugged the melon before it was ripe. If we had then been under the pressure of the plurality rule, and the choice between him and Banks, he would have been elected, sure as fate, in my opinion.”[29]
In conversations with the writer of this memoir, and in letters to him on the subject, Mr. Stephens often spoke of Mr. Kelly’s conduct during this first great struggle between the Democratic and Republican parties in the House of Representatives, as truly admirable and patriotic. “Mr. Kelly,” said he, “never hounded on anybody against the South, but was one of the few Northern Democrats who then stood firmly by us, in defense of our Constitutional rights against the assaults of Republicans and KnowNothings, who had formed an unholy alliance against us.” The present writer has sometimes read, with surprise, attacks on Mr Kelly in Southern newspapers of respectability and standing, such as the Baltimore Sun and Atlanta Constitution, which only could be ascribed to insufficient information on the part of the writers, or perhaps they unintentionally erred in accepting the scurrilous caricatures of Puck, and other Gerrymanders, for the real John Kelly.
Mr. Banks appointed the standing Committees of the House in the interest of the ultra wing of the Republican party, of which William H. Seward and Joshua R. Giddings were the leaders. M. Seward was at length at the head of a great organization, with the immense power of the popular branch of Congress at his back, and no other man in American politics ever made more of his opportunities. Five years
before he had been rudely jostled from his dream of ambition by the death of President Taylor, to whose friendship for him he was indebted for his elevation to leadership in the Whig party in 1849. That event had been rendered possible in consequence of the disastrous feuds in the Democratic party of New York in 1848. While Hunkers and Barnburners fought, the Whigs captured the Legislature of New York, by which a Senator in Congress was to be chosen. Mr. Seward was elected Senator. His political sagacity soon enabled him to grasp the situation. Deeming it certain that whoever might control the Administration patronage, whether Senator or not, would control the politics of New York, he went to Washington, and paid assiduous court to that dashing Virginian, William Ballard Preston, Secretary of the Navy, to whom President Taylor was more attached than to any other member of his Cabinet. As a charmer Mr. Seward had few equals. He was addicted to aphorisms, and studied bon mots with the diligence of Sheridan. His affectation of philosophy was set off by good manners and easy address. He had been a school-master in Georgia, and had at his command a fund of South-of-Potomac reminiscences, saws, and anecdotes. In the company of William Ballard Preston he was never so happy as when expatiating over the types, and modes, and fascinations of Southern society. The Tazewells, Randolphs, Gastons, Lowndes, Calhouns, Crawfords, Forsyths, Lumpkins, and other famous Cavaliers, were all names familiar on Mr. Seward’s lips as household words. It did not take him long to win Preston, and that gentleman soon addressed himself to the task of winning over the President to the side of Mr. Seward. But Vice-President Fillmore was Seward’s bitterest enemy, and Taylor’s confidence was of slower growth than Preston’s. Fierce sectional passions upon the subject of slavery were already raging between the North and South, and the old hero of Buena Vista desired to allay those passions, and render his Administration the era of pacification. Pledges were finally exacted and given, James Watson Webb representing Mr Seward, and Secretary Preston representing the President, and the patronage of the Administration in New York was placed at Mr. Seward’s disposal; in consideration of which that wily diplomat entered into engagements to take no part in the Senate of the United States in the Abolition agitation, but to pursue a policy of
conciliation and compromise at Washington. He had been elected Senator to succeed a Democrat. Daniel Webster, Henry Clay and John J. Crittenden, and the other leading Whigs in the Senate and House, were friends of Mr. Fillmore, and unalterably opposed to Seward’s recognition by Taylor, upon any terms, as leader of the Administration party in New York. Angry controversies took place in Administration circles. A breach occurred between the President and Vice-President, and their social relations were broken off. Preston had acquired complete personal ascendency over Taylor, and the old soldier became a violent partisan of Mr Seward. The Senator from New York was now recognized as the real leader of the Whig party, and wielded the Administration lash with exasperating indifference to the powerful men arrayed on the side of Mr. Fillmore. Alienations took place between life-long friends, and many of the great Whig statesmen were not even on speaking terms. The Whig party was rent in twain.
Mr. Blaine has recently discussed some of the political events of this period of American history, in his valuable work “Twenty Years of Congress,” but in assigning causes for the destruction of the Whig party, he has strangely overlooked this portentous quarrel, provoked by Seward, which was the underlying cause,—the causa causans,— of the dissolution and utter extinction of that celebrated party.
On the 11th of March, 1850, Mr. Seward, unmindful of his pledges to William Ballard Preston, made a violent Abolition speech in the Senate. The Georgia school-master has outwitted the Secretary of the Navy. Charles Francis Adams, in his memorial address at Albany on Mr. Seward, stated that he was aware of the “agreement,” as he called it, between the Auburn statesman and Taylor’s Administration, but he must have been ignorant of its real terms, for a descendant of two Presidents would scarcely have regarded the violation of voluntary pledges as a fit topic for glowing eulogy.
And now in that month of March, 1850, William H. Seward was at the height of power. In all human probability he would be next President of the United States. Short-lived triumph. The summer of his glory was soon overcast with stormy portents. Within four little months Zachary Taylor lay dead in the White House, and Fillmore,
Seward’s dearest foe, was President. The downfall of the Whig party soon followed, and Mr. Seward and Winfield Scott sat amid its ruins. It was about this time that Daniel Webster said to his friend Peter Harvey of Boston: “One of the convictions of my mind, and it is very strong, is that the people of the United States will never entrust their destinies, and the administration of their government, to the hands of William H. Seward and his associates.”[30]
But Mr. Webster, perhaps, underestimated the character of Mr. Seward. In 1856, upon the election of Nathaniel P. Banks as Speaker of the House of Representatives, the distinguished New York Senator became titular primate of a new and more powerful organization than the Whig party ever had been in its palmiest days. England is governed by Cabinet Ministers with seats in Parliament; the United States by standing Committees of the Senate and House of Representatives, by whom legislation is initiated, secretly formulated, and then carried through both Houses by aid of caucus management, and under the whip and spur of imperious majorities. This vast energy Mr. Seward now commanded through Speaker Banks in the House of Representatives. He had admirable lieutenants. Banks was a fair Speaker in his rulings, and not a sticker over non-essentials, but in everything that seriously affected the welfare of the Republican party, he was an aggressive and tenacious partisan. The astute Thurlow Weed was even a shrewder politician than Mr. Seward himself; and Horace Greeley, adopting the maxim of Daniel O’Connell—that agitation is the life of every cause— employed his unrivaled editorial pen in the anti-slavery crusade, now fairly inaugurated throughout the Northern States. Yet with all his great advantages and skill as an organizer, Mr. Seward could not have carried the Republican party to victory, had not some of the leaders of the Democratic party, during the last five years of their ascendency at Washington, wilfully neglected their opportunities, and given to their more vigilant opponents the vantage ground in the collision of forces on the floor of Congress.
During the latter days of the Pierce administration, and the whole of that of Buchanan, measures of great national importance were defeated through the culpable negligence of a few Southern
Democrats. Northern Representatives who stood by the South in defense of its constitutional rights, bitterly complained of this neglect on the part of those who were so deeply interested. These Northern men, like Mr. Kelly and Horace F. Clark, had to brave a false but growing public opinion at the North, on account of their heroic devotion to what they deemed the line of duty, especially on the great Territorial questions, over which the Union was being shaken to its foundations. They had, therefore, the right to expect corresponding earnestness on the part of all their fellow Democrats of the South. To hold to Jeffersonian, strict construction opinions was then becoming extremely unpopular at the North, and involved sacrifices that threatened to blight their political prospects. To maintain similar opinions at the South was a wholly different matter. Everybody there believed in the State-rights doctrine, and public men were carried smoothly on with the current in defending measures of administration.
Mr. Kelly observed some things which he could not but regard with pain during the Thirty-fourth and Thirty-fifth Congresses, for they were pregnant with ill-omens for the country, and to a man of his perspicacious brain they must have foreboded those disasters to the Democratic party which ere long overtook it. There was an incapacity for affairs on the part of a few Southern Representatives, and a proneness to intemperance among quite a number of otherwise excellent men from the same section. It was a bad symptom of the distempered state of the Democratic party to find many of its Representatives frequently, and inexcusably, absent from their seats when test votes were about to be taken, fraught with vital interest to the South, and decisive of great national policies. The fault was more grievous, when the absentees, as was often the case, would have been able to change the result by being present and voting. This was attributable in some measure to inexperience, and want of training for public life. Some there were who were addicted to pleasure parties, frequently went home to their families, and entertained fanciful ideas respecting the duties devolving on gentlemen in society That they were honorable men who would not stoop to disreputable conduct, no one who knew them can for a moment doubt. Indeed their integrity bore refreshing contrast to the looser
